Looking ahead – Plans for the last few months in 2012 and beyond

I’ve so many prototypes that I want to finish, fresh game ideas and a burning desire to create an Xbox Live Indie Game that without a plan of action, I could find myself going nowhere!

For a while I’ve been looking to create an indie game for the xbox, which you can probably guess from the amount of games I’ve created geared around the controller! This is why my next major project will be developed using XNA with the intention of being released on the Xbox 360’s indie marketplace in addition to a PC release. No doubt this will be a much more involving and challenging task but it is one that I am looking forward to. The big question is what game should I develop? In all honesty, right now I’m not sure. It will be a game that I’ve already started work on, at least to some level, as I don’t want to get too far in before going “hey lets try something different”. At this stage it is a close one between Captain Getsu (combination of original & survivor), Paint It Jack, X-Orbtek and The Really Annoying Game. X-Orbtek will no doubt be the quickest and easiest game to develop but being so soon on the back of the PC version, its maybe a little early. I’m quite tempted to create a version of Captain Getsu as it was originally intended, putting in many more hours to get the AI and balancing sorted.

I had planned that once X-Orbtek was out, I would abandon using GameMaker for a while to focus on the Xbox and also I’m growing tired of going through various submissions processes. Then something pretty awesome happened… GameMaker is now on Steam! On top of the straight making games they are using the Workshop as a great means of sharing games, even WIP ones, that folk have created. For this reason I am keen to return to my pattern of creating prototypes and then picking them up and improving them here and there. Workshop isn’t for profit and to be honest, given my sales have been quite poor I don’t feel as though it is worth the effort modifying them to get released elsewhere. At the end of the day I just want people to play and enjoy my games. If they prove popular, maybe I can fix any balancing issues, add levels, tweak features and get them out to places when they can be bought but until then, create & share! My currently released games will all also make it onto Steam for free, providing they aren’t a pain to convert. This will wait until 2013 though as they are being sold to raise money for charity at the moment!

So there you have it… my plan going forward. My first XNA game will start development soon, my prototypes will come out here and there on Steam for free with all games that I can port easily enough joining in 2013. As a side note, X-Orbtek will be having a special IndieCity version too as I play about with their achievements system 🙂